How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less • Hacker News Board

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#101

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:24 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #77

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you think of a sanitation worker — riding on a garbage truck and dumping trash can after trash can — most people would picture a big, tough guy in their minds. But out of 7,000 uniformed city workers nicknamed "the strongest," 200 of them are women. In honor of women's history month, the department celebrated some of the the first females to suit up in green. Verilyn Gallo was only the third woman in the depart…

That's <3% of refuse collectors So women are more shockingly underrepresented in refuse collection than in the upper ranks of the Fortune 500...

The original claim seemed to be that women were hypocritically wanting equality only for the good CEO-type jobs.

How the original poster missed the many women who have chosen to be (and often fought hard against the same prejudice they meet in "prestigious" careers to be accepted as) police officers, firefighters, soldiers, nightclub bouncers, oil rig workers and do various other dangerous, dirty or under appreciated jobs I have no idea.

But I thought the example presented summed up the issue quite well given the obvious enthusiasm the worker had for her job.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#102

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:27 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #90

jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not where I live and this is a pretty rich country. Between your rent/mortgage, your energy bill, public transportation costs, taxes, mandatory health insurance and food a single person income is not enough to make ends meet. And that's when you don't own a car. Typically a single person income is about 1700 euros net take home, and your costs will be slightly above that (for the above mentioned family of four). The…

What you listed adds up to about 1400 on average. If you can't pay the principal, mortgage seems like unnecessary debt. Also, I'm not familiar with supermarket prices in Europe, but if the person staying home does cook, 350 euro ($450) seems too expensive for the basic ingredients.

You'll have to because affordable housing is so rare that you end up buying a house because the mortgage roughly equals the rent elsewhere. Of course then you do have to pay for the maintenance.

> but if the person staying home does cook, 350 euro ($450) seems too expensive for the basic ingredients.

That's from direct experience and believe me I don't throw money around if I don't have to. A very basic bit of shopping for 3 or 4 days costs you 50 bucks easily, if you're careful you can whittle that down a bit but not by much. And then of course I still have to get to the cheap supermarket and back, which is 20 km by car, if I bought it in the one around the corner I'd pay quite a bit more. No freezer here (no space for one either) so I can't buy larger quantities.

Please note that I left things like cell phones, internet connection and TV subscription, newspapers etc out because they're not strictly speaking 'needs'.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#103

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:29 PM UTC

aswanson wrote: post #93

dennisgorelik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So high taxes make people more likely to maintain traditional family (husband works and wife runs the household).

Or hold back on having children, or lowering the number of children that they have.

Possibly lowering that number all the way down to 0.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#104

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:38 PM UTC

megablast wrote: post #70

caf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aye - being a stay-at-home husband and father ought to be as equally socially acceptable as wife & mother.

No, I am sorry it is not. Anybody can stay at home. Not anyone can start up a company, or work at a senior level, or even work at a technical level. There are plenty of people who could never achieve that level of competence, they can stay at home.

I hear running a startup and raising kids both tend to involve rather significant amounts of drive, talent, and time investment to be successful.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#105

Post by helveticaman » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:39 PM UTC

chmike wrote: post #24

olalonde wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw it coming at "pretty much focused on food and sex".

Bonobo monkeys have been seen trading food (fruits) for sex. What is new for me here is that they adopted a currency.

But that's just like buying a woman dinner. It's arguably about sharing a gift and having an experience. Money is a (perhaps small) step further.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#106

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:41 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #29

jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days. The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. And if you don't have children and your spouse is out working you might as well go to work yourself, rather than t…

Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had time. So she quit. My dad calls it the pay-your-neighbor-so-he-can-pay-his-neighbor phenomenon. Uncle Sam makes the most money in that relationship. He makes nothing when you babysit your own kid; he makes plenty when you hire someone to do the same thing(and…

Someone at my office had a kid not long ago, and after he and his wife weighed daycare options versus her returning from maternity leave, they realized it was pretty much a wash.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#107

Post by tptacek » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:47 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #100

tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true until your children hit school age, at which point child care becomes radically less expensive.

Now why would that get modded down, it is a well known joke that school is 'cheap daycare' amongst people that have both parents working full time. Once the children hit school age they are in school for the same amount of time that they would have been in daycare otherwise, and schooling costs much less than daycare. Which is weird, because daycare effectively is a school (one adult supervising a bunch of youngsters…

Huh? I'm not even joking. I don't look at school as day care, but whether you think that or you don't, you're not paying for someone to watch the kids while they're there.

This isn't politics. It's a simple fact. You stick out 5 years or so with very expensive child care (maybe 4, for many families, where someone stays at home for the first year), and then two-income families make sense again.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#108

Post by dagw » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:49 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #106

zaidf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had time. So she quit. My dad calls it the pay-your-neighbor-so-he-can-pay-his-neighbor phenomenon. Uncle Sam makes the most money in that relationship. He makes nothing when you babysit your own kid; he makes plenty when you hire someone to do the same thing(and…

Someone at my office had a kid not long ago, and after he and his wife weighed daycare options versus her returning from maternity leave, they realized it was pretty much a wash.

It's certainly not a wash once you factor in the opportunity cost of sitting at home and letting your skills and contact network fall to the wayside. It's a lot easier to find a job (or get your old job back) if you start working as soon as your child is old enough for daycare than if you wait 6 years for your child to start school. In addition your salary after having worked those years will probably be quite a bit higher than your starting salary after having stayed at home for those years.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#109

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 2:59 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #107

jacquesm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now why would that get modded down, it is a well known joke that school is 'cheap daycare' amongst people that have both parents working full time. Once the children hit school age they are in school for the same amount of time that they would have been in daycare otherwise, and schooling costs much less than daycare. Which is weird, because daycare effectively is a school (one adult supervising a bunch of youngsters…

Huh? I'm not even joking. I don't look at school as day care, but whether you think that or you don't, you're not paying for someone to watch the kids while they're there. This isn't politics. It's a simple fact. You stick out 5 years or so with very expensive child care (maybe 4, for many families, where someone stays at home for the first year), and then two-income families make sense again.

I think I made the link with the joke because you used the words 'child care', but still that did not deserve a downmod.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#110

Post by crpatino » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 3:08 PM UTC

dublinclontarf wrote: post #57

roel_v wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I guess that the comparison is meaningless with someone who lives in a 2nd tier Chinese city...

It's got me thinking on changing professions.

You do not seem to have got the point at all. It is not about the profession, it is all about decommoditization.

The first and most important thing she (unknowingly) did right was to avoid having a pimp in the first place. The second important thing she did was to differentiate her service and offer it to the premium market.

You can follow the same strategy as a teacher. Refuse to lecture a class of 50+ students* (where the break even point for the school is 5-10). Seek instead to position yourself as a personal tutor for the children of the wealthy.

You will find out that you need to provide a quality of service way beyond what is expected of an average classroom instructor, and also you will have to tolerate your customers idiosyncrasies. But, hey... you would have to do that anyway!

* I am going to the outliers here. 50+ students is the low end of a continuous. I am just trying to draw a parallel to the other example in the article (the $18k/yr street hooker).